I purchased an exercise DVD that was created by a local health practitioner. Whoever created the DVD for her used some wonky settings that prevent me from being able to go into fast forward mode on my DVD player. The DVD is not copy-protected

Is there a Mac program that I can get that will let me make a copy of the DVD but without silly settings such as "no fast forwarding"?

You mean a DVD protection remover? I believe many tools have been designed for this purchase so far. From my opinion, I prefer dvdaid since it has successully copied all my DVD collection. No need for the original disc anymore.